Religion has become the new politics

By Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar

Financial Times

Published: January 18 2005

Religion is
the emerging political language of our time. In the United States
and the Middle East this is clear, but also throughout most of what
we used to call the third world. Even in Europe, which introduced
the separation of church and state, religion is taking on a new
significance through the political expression of Islam.

One of the best places to see how religion operates as a
political idiom is Africa. Everywhere there are signs of religion in
public space, whether it is rows of kneeling men saying their midday
prayers on the street in Muslim areas, or the proliferation of
churches, especially Pentecostal and charismatic ones. There are
also visible revivals of traditional religion, including in the
numerous private armies whose young fighters wear amulets for
spiritual protection. The media are full of religious stories, often
concerning witchcraft and frightening spiritual experiences. Tales
of people who claim to have visited the spirit world are common.
Often, they concern transactions that determine the distribution of
power in the material world.

Odd though it sounds, stories such as these are political
comments by people who believe that all power has its ultimate
origin in the spirit world. Consequently, they consider spiritual
and political power to be connected. Many Africans debate issues of
governance in spirit terms, a popular idiom with deep roots in local
cultures. Popular stories often describe not only corrupt
politicians but also international institutions, including the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as purveyors of evil,
without moral sense.

The separation of religious from political thought was invented
in the west and exported to the rest of the world in colonial times.
However, most Africans believe in the existence of a spirit world
that is distinct but not separate from the material one, one that
affects their daily lives. In fact, this is the sense in which
people in most continents experience religion - as a world of
spiritual beings, to paraphrase the Victorian anthropologist Edward
Tylor. Most westerners do not think of religion in this way. For
them, religion is more a matter of ultimate meaning.

To believe in invisible forces that govern our lives is not at
all eccentric. It could be argued that this is what capital is. The
manipulation of spiritual forces is essentially no different from
speculation on international markets. In both cases, gains and
losses depend on interaction with an invisible force. Intrinsic to
Europe's financial revolution more than three centuries ago was the
use of mathematics as a way of calculating risk, prompted by a new
theology emerging from the Reformation. The spirit of capitalist
enterprise was originally associated with a religious view of the
world.

In most of the world, the current religious revival and its
political consequences have to be understood by reference to
colonial conquest. There was nothing novel about being ruled by
foreigners in most of the territories colonised by European powers
in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor was foreign influence
unprecedented in places that were never formally colonised, such as
Turkey or China. What was new about the European imperialism of
those days was the eventual attempt by metropolitan powers to
modernise and develop traditional societies. This was often
associated with an ideology of the civilising mission, but it was
above all an attempt to develop colonial resources for the benefit
of the imperial rulers.

The golden decades of African economic development were the 1950s
and 1960s, during the longest and widest economic boom in the
history of the world. Millions of people moved from villages to
towns. Many gained salaried employment. They sent their children to
school. Development planners generally saw this as a movement from
tradition to modernity but neglected the spiritual aspect of this
transition, seeing religion as an obstacle to progress. But for many
people, it now transpires, progress is not a material issue alone.
Moreover, development has too often failed to deliver even the
material benefits it promised. The end of the cold war and the new
wave of democratisation made space for the re-emergence of religious
ideologies. The current resurgence of religion is a modern attempt
to harness traditional resources for contemporary use.

Religion has emerged as a new global language also because both
the White House and al-Qaeda see themselves as locked in a cosmic
struggle between good and evil. When they insist that the world is
either for them or against them, they create a risk that political
and social struggles everywhere will be redefined as religious
battles. Politicians may encourage such a stark approach as a way of
gaining support.

Religion is simultaneously a way of understanding the world and
of relating to other people. These are important ways in which it is
allied to politics. This fact alone should impel us to understand
this new idiom.

The writers are co-authors of Worlds of Power: Religious
Thought and Political Practice in Africa, (Hurst/OUP
2004)